Why Making Other People Feel Good Should Be Part of Your Job

In his blog today, The Only Thing That Really Matters, Tony Schwartz, president and CEO of The Energy Project and the author of Be Excellent at Anything, highlights a key point that is crucial for all leaders to understand. Schwartz explains that triggers for negative emotions have at their root “the feeling of being devalued or diminished by someone else’s words or behavior.”

Why does this matter in my work with organizations? Because how people are feeling affects their mood, their behavior and their performance whether or not they are aware of it. As Schwartz says, “To feel valued (and valuable) is almost as compelling a need as food. The more our value feels at risk, the more preoccupied we become with defending and restoring it, and the less value we’re capable of creating in the world.”

When people don’t feel valued and appreciated either by their board, their manager, their peers or their customers, it eats away at them and at best, it makes it nearly impossible for them to achieve what they are capable of and at worst, can have a cancerous affect on anyone with whom they come into contact.

This is why great leaders know that it is not just the kind and mensch-like thing to do to care personally about those in your organization but it is part of your job in pursuit of maximizing the organization’s returns. Because when leaders and managers listen to, respect and make others around them feel valued and appreciated, people perform at their best and organizations can thrive.

You can read Tony’s blog post at http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2011/06/the-only-thing-that-really-mat.html